Over the weekend I created a Arduino controlled power outlet based on this design.

With this connected to a the Arduino I can control the two plugs independently. One end (which I cut an old US style plug) I plug into the mains power, the other end I connect to the Arduino (four connections):

The fit was a bit tight!

I did some tests to see if when the solenoids are on whether is would heat up too much.

After about about a 1/2 hour it did heat up to 32 C° which isn't too bad. So now I'm all set to scare some animals.

The idea this weekend was to setup the sonar with the Arduino so that I can get a shot of the Siriemas that pass daily at the farm, or maybe a hummingbird.

Well that didn't work out so well, turns out that the sonar is affected by the wind. Adding a bit of hysteresis to the code, fixed it for the most part.

I used lua to program the camera, except that it looks like there some issues with it and my Canon SD450. Calling get_shooting() repeatedly causes problems, for example. I got my intervalometer code to work correctly only after removing that test. Here's some timelapse photography that did work.

This weekend I played with my Canon PowerShot SD450 (aka IXUS 55) and the CHDK along with the Arduino and the MaxBotix MaxSonar LV-EZ1. The idea is to automatically take pictures when an object moves into frame. Part of the job involved hacking a USB cable to hook up to the Arduino which I promptly did, as you can see below.

Unfortunately, I was supposed to hack a Mini-USB cable (of which I have a dozen) and instead hacked my (only) Micro-USB cable (oops).
The end I soldered two break away headers and then encased the whole thing with hot glue.

Here's the setup. You can see the sonar on the right. I soldered a female header to it instead of soldering wires directly to the board. The hacked USB cable is connected to ground and pin 13. For the sonar I've plugged it into Ground, 5V, and pin 7.

You may also note that I'm not using the AN (analog) pin on the MaxSonar, but instead the PW (pulse width) pin, unlike most code I saw on the web. The code is near the bottom on this …